Familiar Magic (Druid Enforcer Academy Book 1)

by C. S. Churton

  “Those same wards that suppress my power suppress yours, too.” He smiled, all teeth. “Except mine isn’t fully suppressed.”

  “Yes. You still have the ability to plant little sticky balls of black energy inside people. Terrifying.”

  I rolled my eyes and picked imaginary dirt from under my nails.

  “And yet, you came back.”

  “What can I say? It doesn’t match my eyes. Can you take it back?”

  “Can I? Yes. Will I?” He paused and my heart stuttered. “Also yes. For a price.”

  “What is it you want? Another one of those terrible books? Looks like your home library is a little small.”

  “You know what I want. Free me, and I will lift to spell.”

  He straightened to his full height, and the lamp in the ceiling cast his shadow over me. I resisted the urge to shudder and forced a hard laugh.

  “Free you? Never. I was prepared to die to stop you before. That hasn’t changed.”

  “Dying is easy. One brief moment, and it’s done. But living?”

  He shook his head. I saw it, then. My whole life stretched out in front of me, with this thing squatting inside me. No familiar would accept me. Gryffs would shun me. No career as an enforcer. No future in Itealta. And everywhere I went, the circle watching me, waiting for the spell to take me over. And I would have to live through it all, waiting, never knowing what Raphael’s spell would become.

  I swallowed, tasting acrid fear. Real fear. Fear like I hadn’t known since that night when Kayden had died. When I had been prepared to die. Because Raphael was right. Dying was easy. Living was harder.

  “Can you face living, Lyssa?”

  I swallowed my fear – not getting rid of it, just forcing it further inside my body. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to run out of room there.

  “Can you, Raphael?”

  I pushed myself off the door and paced round the cell. He turned, following my progress with tight eyes.

  “I mean, this isn’t what you had in mind, was it?”

  I paused by his book, picked it up and flicked through it, then tossed it back on his bench.

  “You were going to start the war, right? That was going to be your legacy. Take control of the druids. Teach the mundanes their place. How’s that working out for you?”

  Raphael’s hands tensed, but he quickly smoothed them out again. Not quickly enough that I couldn’t see I was getting under his skin, though. I completed my circuit and ended up back at the door.

  “In the few minutes, I’m going to leave this room. You never will. That’s my promise to you, Raphael. This cell will be your grave. They won’t even bury you when you die. They’ll just seal up the door and leave you here. That’s all your legacy will be: a sealed room and a rotting corpse. And nothing you can do will change that.”

  I watched him for a moment, but his face gave nothing away. Still, I felt sure my words were getting to him.

  “But what happens between now and then, that you can change.”

  “Oh?” He didn’t quite manage to pull off polite disinterest, and I hid a satisfied smirk.

  “Cooperate. Lift this curse.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “If you do, I’ll ask the circle for leniency. To make your stay here more… tolerable.”

  He laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. There was no room for mirth in here. Even the air tasted of bitterness and stagnation. Raphael was stagnating.

  “I’ve had my fill of books, Lyssa. There’s nothing the circle can offer me, nothing you can offer me, that would compel me to help you. Except my freedom.”

  “Not on the table,” I said, holding his eye unflinching.

  “Then I do believe we are at an impasse.”

  He moved back to his bench and picked up his book.

  “If there’s nothing else?”

  I shook my head in disgust. What a waste of time this had been.

  “Enjoy your book. It’ll be the last you get for a while.”

  He lifted his gaze for long enough to send a grim look in my direction.

  “So be it. Enjoy your… life.”

  I turned for the door and made it all of one step before something hammered into my back. I gasped and stumbled, stretching one hand to the door. Cold agony spread through me, like a knife carving into my chakra. My legs gave way beneath me, sending me slamming into the door. I lifted a fist and hammered on it with what little strength I had left. The lights were swimming around me and I blinked, trying to clear my sight, but every time my eyelids closed they threatened not to open again, and when they did, my sight was more blurred than it had been before. Air wheezed in and out of my lungs like sucking in hot ash, burning the whole way down and back out again in agonising contrast to the ice spreading through my spine.

  I willed my arm to lift again and slap feebly against the door, but it was already opening. Strong hands caught me, keeping me from crashing into the ground.

  “Lyssa! What happened?”

  I tried to answer as Cody dragged me clear of the room, but my lips wouldn’t cooperate, and my tongue was heavy and sluggish in my mouth.

  He lowered me to the floor, leaning me back against a wall. The door slammed shut and keys jangled in the lock, the sound echoing and amplified in my ears. His arm was back a moment later, wrapping around me and sending a jolt of pain through my shoulders.

  “Alright, I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay.”

  I groaned, and the sound was incoherent even to my own ears. I frowned, trying to form the words with wooden lips. I had to tell him what Raphael had done. I had to warn him.

  “C…”

  “Don’t try to speak. I’m going to get you out of here.”

  He lifted me in his arms like I weighed nothing, and I curled into him. His body was warm, but not warm enough to melt the river of ice inside me. I shivered violently, then clenched my jaw and tried again.

  “Cu… Curse.”

  “He cursed you?”

  I nodded, and my eyelids made another bid to seal themselves. For a moment, I considered letting them. If I could just sleep a little, it would clear my head.

  No. I needed to… to warn…

  “Cauldwell,” I croaked.

  “Okay. I’ll tell him. Let’s worry about you now, okay?”

  I nodded and exhaled in a sigh. My gaze drifted to one side and the floor blurred into a grey smudge. Black and yellow-brown flashed, and I blinked it away, then decided that it wasn’t worth the effort. My eyelids slid closed one more time.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As ideas went, that hadn’t been one of my finest. If I hadn’t realised that going in, I certainly did by the time I’d been forced to spend an entire weekend and most of Monday on the medwing. I’d blacked out before we made it out of Daoradh – Cody carried me above the surface, then drove me through the wards and portalled me to the academy. I owed him some serious thanks. Especially after I’d given him the runaround all summer. But at least one good thing had come of his persistence. Paisley’s rage curse was gone. And sure, she was still a little bitter, but who could blame her? But if hers was gone, then the other Bittens’ had to be, too. Which meant Kelsey could finally start to put what Raphael did behind her. Whatever else came next, I slept a little easier knowing that.

  The pain had gone, but I knew I wouldn’t be rid of the curse that easily. I hadn’t dared to attempt a trance yet – I couldn’t quite face seeing what he’d done to me. Because there was a numbness spreading through me that could only be bad news. Killian was right. I was a coward. Lying in here, hiding from the truth. Raphael was right, too – making a snap decision to risk my life in the heat of battle was easy. Facing a lifetime with this curse inside me was anything but.

  It didn’t help that I hadn’t had a single visitor to distract me from my thoughts. Not even my friends, which I thought was a bit harsh. I’d have visited them. Not even Elias, which I thought was a bit odd. I figured at least he
would care about why one of his students had been taken straight to the medwing after visiting one of the most dangerous druids alive. Although, I was a tiny bit glad – I didn’t much feel like explaining my idiocy to him. Why on earth had I turned my back on Raphael? I hadn’t even seen what he’d done.

  The healer checked on me every couple of hours, but other than that, I was alone. When he came by next, I decided, I’d ask to be discharged. There was nothing he could do, anyway, and I could just as easily recover somewhere else in the academy where I wouldn’t be isolated and moping. I’d feel better if I was doing something proactive.

  Glenn found me first.

  “Ah, Lyssa. Here you are. What excuse do you have for missing our spellcrafting session this time?”

  “Uh…” I gestured the bed I was lying in, and the medwing in general. “Been a bit busy.”

  “Nonsense. It looks to me like you’ve been lying around feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Well, he had me there. His eyes crinkled in amusement, and I returned his smile half-heartedly.

  “Shall we begin, then?”

  “Um, I think I’m a little under-dressed.”

  “Perfect. That’s an excellent place to start. You can glamour yourself some clothes.”

  “Or,” I countered, “since you could pierce the glamour, and since I’d still know I’m sitting here in a hospital gown, you could just pass me my clothes and turn your back.”

  I nodded to the pile of neatly folded clothes sitting on a chair near my bed. Unlike the many times I’d wound up in a hospital bed after a gryff-related incident, they weren’t covered in blood, mud, or animal hair. Which was great, because I still hadn’t mastered a good spell for getting any of those out, and for a while I’d been in danger of running out of clothes. Say what you like about being hit in the back with a soul-sucking curse – at least it didn’t mess up my clothes.

  “I’m glad you at least remember the theory,” Glenn said, setting the clothes on the end of my bed and turning his back.

  “Theory isn’t the problem,” I grumbled, shoving the bed sheets aside and getting to my feet. I paused a moment, testing my balance – two and a half days in bed is murder on your equilibrium – then shed the gown and pulled on my more comfortable jeans and t-shirt. No cloak, since I hadn’t wanted to wear mine to the prison, but I had a comfy old hoodie with a small burn hole in the sleeve – a fireball experiment gone wrong. I tugged it on and perched back on the edge of the bed. The standing had left me a little light-headed.

  “So, what tortures do you have in store for me today?” I eyed his empty hands with relief. “Nothing that needs any props, at least.”

  “Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “And what makes you think that?”

  “Well, unless you’re planning to spring me – and Healer Deverell threatened to feed me to the chimera last time he caught me trying to escape – you’re a little low on supplies.”

  “Oh?” he said again, his lips twitching as he patted the empty space next to his hip. I narrowed my eyes.

  “Sneaky, much?”

  I took a slow breath, ignoring the buzzing inside my skull, and reached inside myself, searching for my magic. A chill ran through me and I shivered. I pushed the cold aside and kept searching, even as panic flashed hot inside me. It had never taken me this long to find my magic before, not even when I’d first learned I had it. Channelling it, sure, that had been tricky, but finding it? That had always come as naturally as breathing.

  I swallowed my panic, took another slow breath, and focused. It was here. It had to be. Raphael couldn’t just wipe that out. He couldn’t. Could he?

  No. I latched onto it, the small, swirling ball of brilliant light inside me, pulsing with power. Relief surged through me as I connected to it. My magic was still here. I would fight whatever Raphael had done to me. But first I’d pass Glenn’s little test. I stared at his hip and willed myself to see through the glamour he had cast. And it had to be a glamour. Any trained druid could pierce a glamour, but they had to know it was there first. And now that I focused on the spot, I could feel the power subtly woven through the air. I stared at it, and abruptly, I wasn’t looking at an empty space anymore. I was looking at a leather satchel.

  I nodded in satisfaction.

  “Excellent,” Glenn beamed. “That’s the easy part done.”

  Of course it was. Glenn ran me through a series of increasingly complex spells over the next two hours – everything from a simple darkness spell over the window to the freezing spell it had taken me weeks to master at the start of last semester. Just as I was sure I was going to pass out – or at least pretend to, to get out of doing any more ridiculously hard spells – Deverell arrived to discharge me. Mercifully, Glenn decided that was a good place to finish for the day, and I stumbled back to my dorm where I collapsed into my bed and didn’t move again until morning.

  As luck would have it, Deverell had said under no circumstance was I to exert myself, which meant I had a great excuse not to show up for Combat Magic and another torturous session of being a human target. I headed down to the gryff field instead, where I spent a frustrating two hours staring at Stormclaw from a distance. He watched me, too, like he wanted to come over, but every time he looked like getting close, he would snort, toss his head, and wheel away in the other direction.

  His injury had fully healed, at least – thanks in no small part to Leo’s visits and Paisley’s efforts. She’d kept him fit, too – he’d be more than capable of holding his own in an Itealta game. If we had a spot in the team, and if he’d allow me on his back. Neither of which was looking particularly likely. Traditionally, the competition season ran from January through May, with training matches being held in October and December, so I’d already missed the first proper game, but mid-season changes were allowed. But short of a miracle, I didn’t see Ryder switching up the team. The next game was four weeks away, and I still couldn’t get within a hundred yards of my gryff. Or any gryff. And no-one seemed to care all that much Xavier had cheated in the race.

  I headed back inside in time to catch the end of lunch, and then headed to Law with Zara and Kyle. Given that our end-of-year assessments were only three months away, I figured it was time to start applying myself, and forget about things that were out of my control. Cauldwell, I had no doubt, was working on whatever the hell was wrong with me, and twelve weeks would make precious little difference to what was going on. It would, however, make a big difference to whether or not I flunked my end-of-year assessments. I hadn’t been through all this just to be kicked out for failing a few exams – but honestly, I was going to need all the help I could get. So for the next few days, I threw myself into my studies, making a point of being early for every session, even Killian’s, and hitting the library whenever I had some spare time.

  By the end of February, I knew something was very wrong. My theory work was fine – well, ‘fine’ was probably a bit generous, but it was no worse than usual. But with each passing day, using my magic became harder and harder, until on one Friday evening, I slipped into Iain’s lecture room just as his last batch of students were leaving. Something hissed at me, telling me I’d probably come a bit too soon, but I ignored it and hurried inside as the last of the students and their familiars left.

  Iain looked up from behind his desk, and Jalen jumped down as I approached, distancing itself from me. I was so used to being the reverse pied piper of familiars by now that I didn’t even bat an eyelid.

  “Lyssa.” Iain frowned. “What brings you here? Not that I’m not happy to see you, of course.”

  “That makes one of you,” I said, as Jalen hopped up onto a table on the other side of the room, keeping one black eye trained in my direction.

  “Must be your winning personality.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I chewed my lip, and then decided it was best just to come out with it. Iain had never judged me before. “I’ve got a problem. I think my magic is dying.”

  His forehead creased, but
the rest of him stayed completely still for a long moment.

  “Dying? What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” I said, pacing up and down a few steps, “dying. Ceasing to exist. I don’t know. But it’s getting harder to use every day. I think…” I stopped and turned to him. “I’m losing my magic.”

  Iain stepped from behind his desk and steered me firmly to a seat. Once he’d parked me in it, he perched on the edge of his desk and regarded me.

  “I think what you’re talking about is impossible.”

  “You do?” I barely dared to hope. I’d never wanted to be wrong so badly as I did right now. I might have grown up without knowing about my magic, but it was a part of me, a part I’d come to love, and I couldn’t bear the thought of spending the rest of my life without it. Living. “Did… Did Cauldwell tell you what happened at Daoradh?”

  Iain nodded. “The curse. Yes, he discussed it with me and Elias.”

  “There’s been a cold spot inside me since then. Growing. Spreading. Could…” I swallowed. “Could it feed off my magic? Consume it?”

  “I’ve never heard of a spell capable of something like that. Tell me more about what you’re experiencing.”

  “My spells are failing – even the simple ones. Stuff I got the hang of back at Dragondale. And when I try to find my magic inside myself, it takes longer every time. Like it’s shrinking. Or being smothered.”

  “The black energy you found in your trance?”

  I nodded.

  “Have you been in a trance since you got back from Daoradh?”

  I shook my head and ducked my head to stare at my feet. No, I hadn’t been in a trance since then.

  “I’m too scared,” I admitted in a small voice.

  “Well, you know what they say about fears.” I heard Iain getting to his feet and lifted my eyes. He held out a hand to me. “It’s best to face them head on.”

  I sighed and let him pull me to my feet. He was right. I couldn’t avoid it forever, and at this stage, could it really be any worse than I was imagining? Well, probably. But I was going to find out, anyway. Before I lost my nerve.